Governance

Pizza Maker Drops Catholic Governance Plan

March 6, 2006

Domino's Pizza founder Thomas Monaghan wisely has backtracked on efforts to impose draconian lease restrictions on a town he's building 25 miles east of Naples. He wanted the town of Ave Maria to be governed by strict Roman Catholic principles. Stores would have been prohibited from selling birth control and magazines with sexual content, and cable television would have had no X-rated channels.

The courts undoubtedly would have taken a dim view of that. As the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 60 years ago: "Ownership does not always mean absolute dominion. The more an owner, for his advantage, opens up his property for use by the public in general, the more do his rights become circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who use it."

There's nothing wrong with promoting Catholic values. But you can't impose them on others even if you own the whole town.